Keeping Score wrote:
Douchebag wrote:
Keeping Score wrote:
But guys like Monta Ellis just don't want to be in Milwaukee.
And that's why teams have to overpay for mediocre players to come to small markets.
And just to expound a bit more on this, a good organization first and foremost, can overcome this problem.
Sure they need to work a bit harder but it can be done.
Just look at this years Conference Finals:
Market Rank/Team16 Miami
25 Indianapolis
37 San Antonio
48 Memphis
For comparison sake, Milwaukee is the 35th ranked Television Market.
If there was ever an argument against who the NBA/ABC bosses wanted to see in the stretch run of the playoffs, this was the year to debunk all of that nonsense.
But the larger problem............is that you just can't pull shit like what John Hammond, GM of the Bucks did this past season. For some unbeknownst reason, he and only he thought that the Bucks could make an extended run in the playoffs if they only had JJ Redick.
And so he gave up a recent 1st rd pick in Tobias Harris, and a 2nd rd pick from the then national champion Kentucky program - Doron Lamb, and lo and behold, he netted JJ Redick.
Redick is now a Clipper and the Bucks have a couple additional 2nd round picks.
Which essentially makes it:
JJ Redick, Tobias Harris, Doron Lamb for Gustavo Ayon, Ish Smith and two 2nd round picks.
Now THAT'S the kind of stuff that REALLY can kill a franchise.
This is a good breakdown, and I regret not adding Hammond to my earlier list of dumb GMs. He's done such a good job of ensuring the Bucks' irrelevance that I completely forgot about his existence.
Your comment about taxes and the CBA and all that stuff is obviously correct, but I also think Douchebag is correct in his observation that big-time players just don't want to play in certain cities. I think 2010 may have been a watershed moment in new-age free agency; you had players scheming to game a system designed to reward re-signing with the team that drafted you. The CBA is one thing, but it will not prevent, nor should it be expected to prevent, the sort of collusive behavior witnessed three years ago. To bring this back to big cities, the most obvious goal of the plot allegedly hatched in 2008 between James, Paul, Melo, etc. was to resist the financial home court advantage enjoyed by their teams in the free agent process in order to play in major cities of their choice.
I don't want to be too extreme here, it's not like every star is aiming to play in Miami, LA, or NY. But 2010 set a blueprint of sorts for future players who refuse to be swayed by the extra money a team they don't want to play for can offer on an exclusive basis. The biggest victims have been and will continue to be small-market teams that don't have the pizzazz to entice their star free agents to stay. OKC and SA have been lucky because they've drafted extremely well, but you're already hearing Love may want out, and we've already seen what LBJ, Bosh, Melo, and Howard have done. Who knows what the East could have looked like now if Cleveland, Orlando, and Toronto retained LBJ, Howard, and Bosh, respectively. With the NBA continuing to add teams in what players consider wasteland cities, I don't see how the gap between the haves and the have nots narrows in any meaningful sense.
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